Beakful | Becquée: is a space for poets, artists, writers, essayists, reviewers who don't necessarily want to get involved in a larger project, but want, from time to time, to place some of their work outside. Header: Jean-François Millet, La Bécquée, 1860. ISSN: 2647-5294

Monday, 26 March 2018

Shoes by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

First person view of my shoes on playaRacetrack Playa @ Death Valley Park National Park, Californiaphotograph by David Fulmer

When I was fourteen
I ran away
became
a hermit in Death Valley

I expected to dehydrate
to whatever was my essence
and in that way
discover myself

but a hundred-year storm came up
and nearly drowned me
in the parched landscape

Wildflowers bloomed like never before
Yellow and purple

Death Valley was too beautiful for me
I returned to suburbia
wearing a pair of shoes

a lady ranger had given me
when she discovered
I hadn’t any

*****

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over thirteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad including Beakful. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and. was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a print edition. To read more of his work, Google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.

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Write your full name and submission type + beakful in the header of your email. Name your attachment with latsname_firstname_title_beakful. Make sure the title of the piece you send appears at the top of the page. No more than one poem per page. No river-long poem. Short fiction preferred.

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